


Circle of the Moon

by Jankenpopp



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: AU, Best Friends, Big Sister Misa, Big sister, Fem!Light - Freeform, Fluff, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 19:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20533022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jankenpopp/pseuds/Jankenpopp
Summary: How would the world be different if the god of the new world was a goddess? Would it be different? A series of vignettes at various points in the timeline, in no particular order.





	Circle of the Moon

Misa Amane had never subscribed to the idea of growing up too fast. She’d considered herself very much a child in the wake of her parents’ murder the previous year; not old enough to drink (though she could charm her way around that), barely old enough to drive (not that she ever expected to have to learn), still caught off guard by laundry day (though she was getting better at timing it). It took more than trauma to mature.

In the year since that horrible night, living on her own had taught her to be self-sufficient and stoked her ambition. A few phone calls and lucky interviews had taken care of the employment issue, which in turn had made it possible - necessary, even - to move to Tokyo. Japan knew her - would know her, if not already - as Misa Misa; one step removed from the childish third person, or perhaps doubling down on it, depending on how she chose to build her brand. A stage name could take many forms: from fans, endearment. From handlers, a gentle leash-tightening.

From a god? That was less clear.

She was abruptly self-conscious of the large bat wings on either side of her purse. She’d bought it on a whim - here in Aoyama, actually, she was just now passing the shop where she’d found it - but had never had cause to regret it until the prospect of a god’s judgment awaited her. Misa wondered if Kira would think it childish, would think  _ her  _ childish. There was logic to everything she did, of course. She wanted to be distinctive without standing out  _ too  _ much. Her aesthetic blended right in here where she’d bought most of it.

It was pointless to ruminate. Even if he didn’t like it, there was no way he would reject her for it. Why would he, when he had used his power to punish her family’s killer, to save her from a killer of her own? Surely he’d be impressed when she used her power to locate him.

The world was awash in crimson, like when she wore those tinted sunglasses she favored. Loose strings of numbers floated above the heads of passersby, mostly crowned with names written in kanji, though the Latin alphabet put in a few appearances. Rem had told her how it worked: find the name without the lifespan and she would find the other Death Note user. It wasn’t as hard as Misa thought the crowd might have made it; reading the names and numbers among the multitude was like reading signs in a busy neighborhood, each easily distinguishable from the rest.

The lonely name confused her when she found it. “Yagami...moon?” she muttered with a tilt of her head. Kanji were so tiresome. They could be read any number of ways, often only tangentially related to the actual characters.

Then she looked at the person below it.

Black dress suit. White blouse. Auburn hair that reached her chest. Her god was a goddess.

Well, then.

\--

“Why all the crosses? Are you a Christian?” Luna had asked on her first visit to Misa’s apartment - more for the sake of conversation, Misa sensed, for Luna Yagami could see an affectation for what it was. Two thousand years of history and dogma was fashion, nothing more. Luna had patiently heard Misa out when she confirmed as much, before steering the conversation so gently she herself might scarcely have realized she was doing it, were she less aware of her dominant tendencies.

“I’ve always been more interested in Greek mythology,” Luna had said. Those gods were capricious, vain, jealous in a way that the Abrahamic God’s use of the word simply didn’t capture _ . _ Divine they might have been, but in a way that reflected the flaws of the humans that told stories about them. They loved, hated, hurt, cried, intense as any human and with humans as their playthings. There was more honesty and frankness in that assessment of fate, in deities made in man’s image rather than the other way around.

No less arrogant Luna, perhaps, but that was the type of god she wanted to be; one which embodied the essential human love of kindness, the rage at its thwarting by greed and hate.

They’d talked for hours in this way that very first day before Misa had remembered she was supposed to be caught off guard. Truth be told, it had only gotten harder to panic over the dashing of her plans for that day, if plans they could be called. Fantasies, more appropriately, and not all of them entirely appropriate. What had she expected, really? A six-two  _ gaijin  _ who could half-cover her face with one warm, heavy hand on the top of her head? A gangster from the big city who seduced starlets like her for fun; who maybe, just maybe, would find it too painful to toss her aside?

Certainly not the freshman - fresh _ girl _ ? - sprawled now on her stomach across Misa’s bed, her hair half braided as Akeboshi blared from the TV at two in the morning. Misa was a quarter inch shy of five feet; Luna was scarcely taller, and Misa could not quite imagine a Hello Kitty barrette in the wardrobe of any seductress. If there was anything Misa Misa expected to be doing with her new god, it was  _ not  _ sitting astride her, matching barrette between her teeth as she tamed the hair of the deity in question.

Astride, perhaps. But none of the rest.

Luna’s younger sister Sayu would never know the strange joy of having a goddess do her hair, or vice versa. Presumably Luna had obliged in younger years, before her studies had consumed her. Had her lucky find made her divine, or had it unsealed something locked within her, made something  _ other  _ of her? Whatever had made her forget the simple pleasure of a makeover, it seemed not even a goddess could truly count herself above it.

Nor could she prepare herself for a mischievous friend with a camera. “Misaaaaa! I said no pictures!”

Any apprehension at their unlikely companionship was passively submitting to the comfort only a friend could offer. Wicked giggles were all Misa could muster as she watched Luna pout at her reflection, as this other girl with another hand at destiny’s throat threatened to write down both of their names if anything this uncharacteristically cute were to ever be seen outside this room of lace and dolls and Western symbols of torture.

She found that same sense of contentment in Luna’s huff of impatience as she checked police records on her laptop once more, in Luna’s subsequent grin as she reached for the Death Note. “Finally updated. Just another late night. Dad knows there’s a leak by now...you’d think he’d get more competent men on information assurance. Maybe store work stuff remotely. I shouldn’t even be able to enter the root password from here...but as ever, it’s all right where we need it. Just as planned.”

Something  _ was  _ different about her, never mind the reason. She was a goddess, true, but she was something more human than a goddess, closer than a friend.

Hmm. Misa had never been a big sister before. Luna didn’t strike her as the type to need one, but family meant more than the people you were born to. She would be the best  _ Misa-onee-chan  _ she could be, and if Luna ever decided to call her that, so much the better. 

It has occurred to Misa that it was love that killed the shinigami Gelus; that that particular Achilles’ heel had, in her own, human case, been successfully submerged beneath the waves of the Styx. Luna had told her that story just the other day, and Misa was still luxuriating in its sad irony.

For her younger sister, whom she has known scarcely one month, she would write the whole world across that river. She supposes that makes her more powerful than any Shinigami.

**Author's Note:**

> The big-sister-Misa idea came to me fully formed in an airport a few weeks ago. I wrote most of it on my phone during a flight delay. This fic seemed the next logical step. I don't see any major changes to the story arising from a Luna Yagami at its center. The next chapter will be near the beginning of her reign and the last will be toward the end. Getting there is always the great unknown.


End file.
